


Visiting

by ChokolatteJedi



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Community: show_goes_on, M/M, flashfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-21
Updated: 2009-01-21
Packaged: 2017-10-14 20:12:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/153011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChokolatteJedi/pseuds/ChokolatteJedi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John pays a visit</p>
            </blockquote>





	Visiting

**Author's Note:**

> For the lj show_goes_on Challenge, with the prompt "anything goes."
> 
> Set early in fifth season, not necessarily canon. Spoilery for _Sunday, Mortal Coil,_ and _Kindred I/II_

John snuck down to the lower and less used areas of the city, using his special relationship with Atlantis to open doors and turn off security monitors. It wasn’t that he was doing something that he shouldn’t – no one had told him that he couldn’t return to this place – but he just didn’t really want anyone else to know what he was doing.

It felt wrong, somehow, to admit that he visited Carson. Not-Carson. Clone Carson, or whatever Rodney and Zelenka had called him/it when they were working on a cure. John honestly didn’t care what the man was called – he was still Carson, down to the last detail.

A door slid open silently and then John was in the room, the rows of empty chambers sparking question after question in his mind. More importantly to John, though, was the one occupied chamber. Carson’s chamber. It didn’t matter to John that this Carson wasn’t technically _his_ Carson, just as the Nanite versions of Elizabeth and his team hadn’t been real.

Nanite John had still looked questioningly at him when Beckett was mentioned, and Clone Carson still gave John those looks that made him babble incoherently with need.

Perhaps visiting Clone Carson was a betrayal of John’s Carson – the one who he had lost on what should have been a wonderful day off together (Even Rodney had rolled his eyes at John when he heard their ‘fishing’ cover story). Perhaps hoping that Clone Carson would be revived some day and would want John was a betrayal. Perhaps that one kiss that they had shared in the Jumper had been a betrayal.

John chose to think that his Carson would be happy if John was happy, just as he knew that he would not have begrudged Carson taking up with a clone of himself, if ever the situation arose. John also liked to think that the Nanite version of himself had hooked up with his original Carson in whatever kind of afterlife they found themselves in. It didn’t necessarily make these trips any easier, but it appealed to John’s sense of humor.

He sat for a long while, looking at this Carson, wishing and thinking and hoping against the one seed of doubt in his mind. They would find a cure. They would. John had thought that the worst pain he would ever feel was the heart-stopping moment when Carson died, but this was worse. To lose Carson, and then get him back, only to have him stand there, frozen and out of reach – that was worse than losing him the first time.

They would find a cure. They _had_ to.


End file.
